I do have mixed feelings about posting this here because I don’t want this website to become about religion and I don’t want things to get side-tracked. However, I know that if I post it elsewhere, that might be less productive and many people who want to read it won’t get to see it. Please forgive the brief detour from my usual subject matter.

I have no problem with letting people know that I’m an atheist, when the context is appropriate. I also tend to have friends and acquaintances who are fine with my being an atheist and who tend to think I’m a decent person. That being said, I don’t really have a desire to participate in A Week, beyond this post, anyway. I have spent a lot of time doing activism to promote the idea that atheists are not a bunch of evil, blood-sucking, kitten-killing, apocalypse-towing, snot-throwers. I may not have the biggest impact in that realm, but it is there. Since I agree that it is important that people understand I’m not evil for being an atheist, I let them know when it is a good time to do so, like in conversations about religion and when people want to know more about some of the things I do. I have even been pretty vocal about it and have been involved in debates over it and participated in efforts to educate others. I will also let it be known here, simply for the sake of formality, clarity and to overkill the point:

I am an atheist. I am not evil.

I am not out to become an atheist evangelist, I have no interest in changing minds unless I think someone is doing something harmful.

I don’t like to brag about it or highlight it or sound like a pretentious douche by saying it, but I’m generally a good person. I always try to make the most rational, least harmful and most productive decisions I possibly can. I feel it is my duty, as a human, to make the world a better place. I enjoy feeling like I’m doing something positive and that I’m making an impact on the world. I like doing that and I have nothing motivating me to do so other than some (to phrase it obnoxiously dryly) neurological structures in my brain that formed via natural selection an evolutionary advantage by reinforcing social bonds and aiding in genetic preservation. In other words, I’m just nice because I’m nice. (Unless someone is paying me to be not-nice to them or a lover wants me to be not-nice to them, then I’m nice by being not-nice. Strangely enough, that seems just as reinforcing, possibly even in the same manner, as being nice.)

So, why am I not accepting invitations to join my peers in A Week? Well, a few reasons. The first one is primarily about how people perceive me. To those for whom this message would matter, my work automatically makes me a ‘bad person.’ It is a silly judgement and one that I’m ashamed still exists in our society. It is based on a stereotype that I’ve had to fight with for a long time, even with people who I care about. This means that A Week (and related campaigns and activities) gives me extra stereotypes to shoot down and that there’s a lot of potential for my participation to send an unintended message: That atheists are bad people because they want to sin. While that idea may seem silly, it is a reality that I have to deal with and acknowledge. To me, that means taking a different approach to the whole campaign.

I’m not sure I need to explain this other related point very much, but it seems to me that placing a great, big, red ‘A’ on my internet-chest, being a sex worker and even a sexual icon to some people might be a bad idea. “Hello, World. Look at my Scarlet Letter!” – Just seems like a message I don’t really wish to send.

Another element of my stance is due to my understanding of human psychology. It is true that atheists are usually good without religion (lots of studies have shown that non-religious groups and people are found less often in prisons and seem to have reduced crime rates and fewer social issues), but trying to highlight it for all of my friends may come across the same way to them as it does to me when someone tries to highlight their participation in a religious charity. Telling people that we’re ‘good without god’ implies (not unjustly) that people without a god are considered bad. This is certainly true, but the audience we need to send the message to is likely to take it as an accusation. Furthermore, the reasons behind the religious highlighting their works, in the same manner, has to do with the martyr complex that people are prone to taking on and I find the possibility of making myself a martyr over atheism to be the wrong message as well.

In conclusion, I’ll be good. I will be a skeptical, atheist, sex-positive angel; I will continue to do the best I can for people and to stay true to myself, but I don’t want to wear your scarlet letter.

P. S. In acknowledging that this is a truly sensitive topic, I really hope that anyone who wishes to comment will do so. I’m open to input and I’m open to being shown that I’m wrong. I can change my mind if given good reason to.

I just had a little impromptu singing session with a client. I had to make up a song that related to his particular fetishes. I based it on the song, “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon. I was so greatly amused by my creativity (and impressed with myself) I thought I would share the results with you:

A man walks down the street
He says “why is my penis so little now?
why is my penis so little?
When people laugh it gets hard
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at submission
Don’t want to lack expression
in an expression grave yard”
bonesucker, bonesucker,
puss in the moonlight
far away, my well-lit door
Mr. Lubejelly Lubejelly
Get this vaj away from me.
You know I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.

If you be my pussy-boy
I can be your long-lost pal
I can call you ‘Betty’
And Betty when you call me,
you can call me Mal

A man walks down the street
He says “why is it short in dimension?
Got a short, little, penile dimension
And so many nights are so long
Where’s my life and dignity?
what if I die here?
Who’ll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone”
He ducked back down the alley
with some roly-poly bossy girl
All Along Along
There were dress events and girl presents
There were hints and strange relations

If you’ll be my pussy-boy
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
and Betty when you call me
you can call me Mal

A man walks down the street
It’s a street in a strange world
maybe its a hot world
Maybe its his first trick out
He learns to speak the language
He dresses all fancy
He is a foreign man
He is confounded by the pound
the pound
of lovers in the marketplace
chains, leather things and ball cages
He looks around, around
He sees bondage in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

If you’ll be my pussy-boy
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty when you call me,
You can call me Mal.

So today I landed on my happy internet-land with a few of my pals on twitter buzzing about some June Cleaver wannabe whining about what she wants in a marriage. Normally, the June Cleavers of the world don’t really interest me that much, but this one does. Why? Because she wrote for Oprah.com. In fact, it is the same reason that my friends don’t want to bother with her that I would like to shake her world up some (if I could). The fact is, when Oprah or her peons say something, it shakes our world up. People listen to her and they need a hundred voices arguing back at her before they’re going to listen to us. As a result, I’m going to eat this woman’s marriage. Or, shall we say, her marriage that apparently didn’t happen.

Apparently, our June Cleaver (or, in this episode, named Karen) is a good little Jewish girl who also had pre-marital sex. She uses her religious upbringing as a cornerstone in her arguments against what our dear Ward Cleaver would ask of her, but apparently didn’t care enough about them to use them when he and she decided to sex it up like a couple of wild bonobos:

Steve made his request after he and I were intimately involved — catching me totally off guard. I’m a nice Jewish girl from Philadelphia who grew up in a cul de sac where we played kickball and said “darn” instead of “damn” when we missed a kick.

Of course, the implication is that “intimately” means they fucked, right? When did the Jews start teaching that premarital fucking was OK, but suddenly the ages old practice of having multiple partners was not? As I recall, Jewish religious texts include stories of non-monogamous relationships. Which, by the way, is what our Ward Cleaver (in this episode, Steve) asked for.

The problem with June’s article is that she is one of many people who are incapable of separating the concepts of “love,” “marriage,” “relationships,” and “sex” and she expects that her own trouble with defining them should be a problem for everyone else as well. All of those concepts are related, but they aren’t the same thing. Many people, however, are incapable of disconnecting them. I won’t fault June for her own desires, that’s not something she deserves to be attacked for. Being able to draw a line to define one’s own boundaries is extremely important. The problem is when one draws one’s own boundaries and then expects others to draw their boundaries in the same way.

June says:

Flings are simply superficial sensory delights. There’s no difference between your partner enjoying a pizza with anchovies without you and your partner enjoying a blonde with blue eyes without you.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I read that as “Snark, snark, snark, snort, snark!”

This honesty enables couples to avoid the emotional downward spiral of hidden affairs because the need for secrecy is removed.

If someone is in an open relationship to avoid an affair, they’re doing it wrong! Affairs are not the product of lack of openness or lack of honesty and dishonesty can still happen in open relationships. Open relationships, ideally, should be about getting the needs met of those involved. Of course, the ideal doesn’t always happen, but the ideal doesn’t happen for all the June Cleavers of the world, either.

On a side note: Karen Salmansohn’s (June Cleaver’s) article does something really odd. It claims to be presented as an article listing “good” and “bad” elements of a concept (pros and cons?) and then in the “good” section, argues against itself, listing “bad” under the “good” label. I could be wrong, but that seemed like some under-handed writing, didn’t it?

Moving herself into her description of the “bad” elements of an open relationship, June completely fails to mention if Ward ever gave an explanation as to why he felt he needed an open relationship in her “good” or “bad” section. Further, instead of listing any pragmatic concepts in her “bad” section, June describes her own definition of a healthy relationship and uses that as a guideline to exclude the possibility of an open relationship from her idea of healthy. It is a nice trick, but I’m not falling for it. Essentially, her own insecurities that she voices as her own opinion then become her basis for defining all open marriages as unhealthy and even potentially hazardous relationships to be in. The thing is, while June is welcome to have her own insecurities, her assumption that they are hang-ups for others is a tremendous problem. June doesn’t want an open marriage, essentially, because she sees her marriage as too closely tied to sex. Other people, however, don’t see marriage that way. In fact, marriage has a longer history of being more about property rights and social ties than it has being about primarily sex. Confining monogamous marriage and sexual behavior to the same shackles is a recent development in Western History and is certainly not a universal stance, even from June’s own Jewish background.

One major beef that I have with Karen’s complaints (I’ll stop calling her “June,” now, it is becoming less entertaining to me and that childish part of me is moving on to more adult things) is that she’s equating open marriage with, as she puts it, “rules for cheating.” In other words, she has already redefined a term in order to fit her own paradigm. The fact is, a healthy open relationship isn’t about “cheating.” It isn’t cheating when it is allowed.

Steve’s desire to have three days of ‘alone’ time morphed into some concept of four-sevenths of a marriage to Karen. The average employed person spends about a quarter of their lives working. Does this mean that if Steve kept a full time job during their marriage, that Karen was only getting three-quarters of a marriage? Is Karen only married when her spouse is with her? What happens if Steve works overtime or two jobs? I think that at some point in her article, Karen went from not wanting to share Steve with another woman to suddenly wanting a set percentage of Steve’s time and attention. I’m not going to say that desire is right or wrong, but just want to mention that the statements were incongruent with their context and what seemed to be her intent.

Karen clearly hasn’t studied open relationships enough, or, Karen’s interest in selling her book outweighed anything she might have learned from studying open relationships. See, Karen also makes it clear that her feelings about open marriages are tied to how she defines what’s healthy in a relationship. In her article, then, she refers to her book, Prince Harming Syndrome which, based on this article, refers to conditions she deems harmful in relationships with men:

Prince Harming is someone who does not make his partner feel safe, calm, secure, confident — and the idea of an open marriage does not leave me feeling that way.

Aside from using a pun to discriminate against any man who may not fit her tidy outline of perfection, the above quote brings up some entirely different issues. Since when should a woman, independent and strong (one would hope) need a man to make her feel “safe, calm, secure” and “confident?” If one’s self-esteem has all of those riding on the back of one man, one’s marriage is going to suck no matter if it is open or not. In a healthy world, our self-esteems are our own responsibility! No other person in the world is accountable for how wonderful any given person is than themselves. You may gain power from your loved ones, your friends and your peers, but your main power source should be you. If you are not your main source of mental support; if your ego lies in a basket on someone’s head, then when those that you have put under yourself as your pillars trip or fall, you have nothing to land on. Our responsibility to ourselves is to be our main pillar. Our responsibility to our friends and loved ones is to share a truss system which will hold us up when any one of us trips, but which we aren’t using as our only weight-bearer.

So what is the difference between love, relationships, marriage, and sex? Love is an emotional response that we can have with nearly anyone. It is a chemical reaction in our brains that we often need and are addicted to. Love feeds our social brains so that we can build unifying relationships that help protect us within our social groups. Relationships are our connections to other people. The deeper the connection, the greater the chance that person will be someone for whom we are willing to sacrifice or who is willing to sacrifice something for us, usually for the good of the (forgive me for being so dry) social unit or family. Marriage is a social contract. I know a great number of people wish it to be more than that, and for many, it is, but marriage usually exists outside of love or as a marker for love, but primarily shows the world where property belongs. Marriage is historically our civilized way of peeing on our lover’s insurance, retirement plan and even their offspring; much like a dog pissing on a bitch’s burrow. I’m not saying marriage can’t have more meaning, people define it to suit their current needs. Because of this, Karen’s idea of marriage works. Marriage is also an incredibly ambiguous term that designates a social standing. At the root of it, though, in our society, it is simply a polite alternative to dumping urea on our lover’s lazyboy. As for sex, sex is an innate desire. Sex is evolution’s answer to how we are to keep our genes alive. Sex is how we roll our dice to attempt to win the genetic lottery. We don’t have to love to do this, we don’t need social bonds for it and we don’t have to pee on a lazyboy first. Sex is evolution’s genetic insurance and our bodies are evolution’s willing puppets. (And with the way natural selection so nicely provided us with an orgasm, who are we to complain?)

I sincerely hope that Karen finds her monogamous man and her picket fence and a cul de sac for her children to pretend they didn’t say ‘damn’ in. I hope that Steve (Ward) also finds his happy, open relationship that suits whatever needs he was looking to satisfy. I hope that Karen learns a little, someday, and stops trying to make her boundaries fit the rest of the world. Finally, I hope she looks up every marital arrangement mentioned in the Torah. I don’t usually suggest people read religious texts, but I think that quest may enlighten her some.

Note: This isn’t to say that cheating can’t happen in an open or polyamorous relationship, it can. I’ve had a partner manage that one. It sucked. The cheating, though, is different and has a different set of rules and norms that accompany it, usually ones that are built by the couple. As an example, my experience involved a problem of neglect. The sex didn’t matter; I didn’t care. Instead, my emotional and mental well-being were suddenly placed on the back burner while my partner’s attention was elsewhere and that’s where everything broke apart. I don’t hold anything against that person, either. Because in all of my experiences, I’ve also learned that sometimes we build rules that people simply can’t follow. That person’s unique situation in their life led to such a problem and they, for whatever reason, could not have predicted what ended up happening. Thus, they’re still my friend, we just recognized an incompatibility and moved on. Aside from that one bad experience, my other experiences with open and polyamorous life have been good and I still consider myself to be an open-poly-flexible person. This basically means that I build relationships based on the needs of those involved. It also means that my future can hold anything from monogamy to polyamory to open relationships and I won’t know until I get there.

Just the other day, Bubbles Burbujas gave excellent advice over on The Frisky. Sadly, many people didn’t happily take it and, instead, gave the same complaints, in the comments section, about strippers (and others in this industry) that I’ve heard for years. I have heard them when I was stripping, camming, doing phone sex and even showing people my pictures. I think we should talk about a few of them (I paraphrased comments made from Bubbles’ articles, they aren’t direct quotes):

I think the moment a person assumes that they are the only thing someone else needs, they need an ego check. People aren’t puzzle pieces and we can’t fill every void left behind in others’ lives by their experiences and biology. It is no secret of nature that men have tremendous sex drives and that women can’t always provide what they want. That being said, it should ultimately be his decision if he wants to go to a club or watch porn or play with a shower head every once in a while. His sexuality is still his to own, no matter who you are! It is also much better to acknowledge this and be open about the possibility of him seeking erotic entertainment than forcing him into a position where he has to hide a part of his sexuality just because he’s afraid of losing you, the one he loves. He knows, like nearly all other men do, that his sexuality is not going to be hinged only on you and what you have to offer. It would help him tremendously if you acknowledged this.

Furthermore, you shouldn’t take it personally. Your sexuality doesn’t hinge on him, either. Your sexuality is as much for you to own as his is for him to own. As a result, if you’re not in the mood, why put yourself in a position where you are obligated to meet his needs?

All that being said, there is room for you and your boyfriend to make agreements on what is OK and what is not. If you two reach an agreement over what is acceptable, that’s an reasonable thing to do as long as one of you isn’t forcing your own idea of what is appropriate onto the other.

P. S. In the wake of announcing that you don’t own another person’s sexuality, I also want to point out that you don’t own his wallet, either.

2) “Complaints? But you’re a stripper!”/”You’re not real so you shouldn’t complain!”

It is a sad reality of the world of anyone in the sex industry that other people in our society seem to think we are on some other rung of the social ladder. As a result, they seem to think that the issues we get to face are acceptable and that we should simply accept them and suck it up. Interestingly, similar arguments were used before the 1920s, when women, housewives, were seen more as property. If their husband beat them, they were sometimes told that they should expect that. Afterall, they were housewives! How can the same argument appear out of such different contexts? Because, it is based on bigotry and a lack of consideration for another human being.

It doesn’t matter what job I have, Entertainer or not. I still deserve my basic human rights. It doesn’t matter if I’m clothed or naked, I still deserve my basic human rights. It doesn’t matter if people give me money to show them my nipples, I STILL deserve my basic human rights! I have the right to tell you that I don’t want you to touch me; I have the right to tell you where you can touch and I have the right to tell you to “fuck off” when you’re being a complete festering anal cyst.

The kind of bigotry that tries to teach an underclass that they deserve to be mistreated is the same kind of bigotry that fuels what hurts us. This bigotry is what lets our abusers get away with beating us; it lets the police overlook crimes against us and it allows us our peers to feel ok about discriminating against us. Our world isn’t innately hellish and our work is not, itself, bad for us. It is when we are thrown into a society in which people exist who think we deserve whatever we find in life because of our jobs that is bad for us and that forces us into a world where more suffering exists than really has to. My work is a great place to get lost in for a while, but the bigots can sometimes make it hell.

If you think that a person being there for you gives you special rights or that the fantasy involved with my work means you can cross boundaries, you’re wrong. That’s just you making excuses. Do you go to Disneyland and grope Cinderella, too? How about the Pirates of the Carribean? After all, they’re entertainers, giving you a fantasy! Obviously, you probably don’t (unless you really are a disrespectful schmuck). They’re people and you recognize that. If you think that way, the chances are your desire to alter the rules for people in strip clubs is not really because we’re entertainers and getting naked, it is because you want an excuse to misbehave because you know that if you don’t have that excuse then there’s something wrong with you.

Thus, if your excuse for society’s behavior–for people’s misbehavior in a strip club (or anywhere else they encounter a sex worker)–is that I’m a stripper or a camgirl or a phone sex actress, Fuck off, you festering anal cyst.*

3) “I don’t see the point of strip clubs!”

That’s nice, I don’t see the point of turtle races, but I don’t make it a point to tell everyone about it. I just don’t go. Clearly, turtle racing wasn’t meant for people like me just as strip clubs weren’t meant for people like you. It seems a little silly to make a big deal out of how pointless you seem to think it is, though.

4) “Strippers are expensive, ergo, they’re bad!”

Cars, houses, phones, utilities and food are expensive, too, and we still pay for them. In fact, most strippers have some of those things to pay for. We are here to entertain you, that’s our job. If stripping didn’t pay, we wouldn’t be here. I may have talent and I may have an ass that some people like to see, but I won’t do it for free for a bunch of random strangers when I need to spend the time on a way to pay my bills. Stripping is expensive work to do. A stripper is typically expected to pay a stage fee, plus tip the bouncer and the DJ (both of whom don’t get to work the floor and get tips-their income relies on us). We’re not bad or evil just because we ask you to pay for our services. We’re just doing our job. The men who are so grateful for what we do that they simply pay up are our favorite people, too. Afterall, it is nice to be appreciated for a job well done, don’t you think?

5) “You don’t deserve respect because you take off your clothes for money.”/”Get a “real” job.”

Firstly, stripping is not just about getting naked. It is a hell of a lot of work. Not only does a stripper have to always look damn good, but strippers spend the better part of an 8+ hour shift just dancing. How many people do you know of are able to do that? In reality, though, how I spend my energy in order to earn my money shouldn’t matter. If you have some hang up over nudity, that’s your problem, not mine. Taking off my clothes for money is a far better job than working as a clerk at Wal-Mart or mopping the floors at McDonald’s. My work as an erotic entertainer involves me being told, all day, that I’m beautiful, smart, funny and awesome. It is esteem-building. Does yours do that for you?

Stripping is a real job. Just because it involves elements that your work doesn’t or just because you disapprove of it doesn’t make it not a real job.

Typically, the person who looks down on people in the sex industry does so for one (or more) of four main reasons: Resentment, jealousy, social conditioning or offense. Pick one and work on it, examine it. Figure out what is threatening or scary about it and then make yourself better, because those feelings shouldn’t be blamed on another person, they are yours to own. Such judgements are unwanted, unnecessary and promote hatred.

*I really just wanted to call someone a “festering anal cyst.” Ad hominems are not valid arguments but for the type of person described, it is certainly an accurate description, don’t you think?

This isn’t a typical topic for my website, but I’m putting it here for lack of a better place to put it. I need to write and share today and I will get back to my normal self soon enough.

Once upon a time, there were two boys who attended a small school in Oregon. One was the burliest little boy in the class and the other was a scrawny, skinny, little farm boy, J. The big boy, R, was the class bully and he had been harassing the skinny little new kid all day long. His constant abuse was so overwhelming that the deep tension made J shake with anger, which came out in full-force when R finally picked a fight at the end of the day. Tumbling around on the ground, the boys fought hard and even though R was so much bigger and stronger than J, J was able to keep up and withstand the fists that rained down on him. Ultimately, the fight was a draw. The boys fought until they were both exhausted and then they went home. The next day, they were friends.

That’s basically the story I was told when I was a child and my uncle and dad talked about how they became friends. Filled with expressions of awe toward each other, my dad and uncle would tease each other affectionately about the circumstances behind their friendship. My dad took the bully out of R and R developed a profound respect for my dad. From that point forward, the two had a bond that was never to come undone.

I can remember sitting around R’s house when I was a little girl, watching my mother become increasingly angry as my dad and uncle told my siblings and I how they built cherry bombs and blew up outhouses and other small structures during their childhood. My mother was terrified that one of us children would actually build a bomb and blow something up. My mother’s eyes would bug out, her face would turn red and she would begin lecturing and pointing at my dad and uncle with the wooden spoon that seemed to constantly be in her hand. “You just wait, J,” she would say, “if your sons blow up the garden, it’s your doing!” My mom was funny when she was angry and whenever one of us did something wrong, we were always dad’s kids. Dad’s kids did bad things; Mom’s kids were angels. My dad and uncle R, who was always happy and jolly (the closest to a Santa Claus persona that I’ve ever seen) would always just laugh at her.

My uncle also had one of the coolest jobs that we knew of as children. He built race cars. Not only did he build race cars, he worked in ‘the pit’ and helped fix them when they were trying to win races. It wasn’t until he had to get a pacemaker that he was forced to quit his exciting job, leaving the family business to his son to take over. He still had epic stories to tell and he and my father would exchange tales for hours when they were given the chance.

My father is not an emotional person. A hardened veteran, a Marine, the only two times I have seen him cry was when my mother died and when my grandfather died. Even in hours of him telling me the horrors he experienced when at war; even when he told me of the horrible time he had holding dying children and the pain of having nails driven through parts of his body when he was a prisoner of war, he never cried. This morning, he was crying. His dear friend, the only person left from his childhood, the man who had always been there, was gone.

Listening to the sobs of an old man this morning, and recalling memories of my ever-jolly uncle has left me in an odd emotional state. I wish so very much that I had something to offer my father to make him feel better. It has suddenly occurred to me how very fragile he is; how fragile my uncle had become. I’m going to miss my uncle very much. My dad’s pain cuts into me as deeply as the loss of my uncle, and I’m worried.

See how unproductive that was? It was not productive at all. It is true that some studies have shown that people who are homophobic are more likely to become aroused at homoerotic stimuli. This doesn’t mean, however, that everybody you talk to who is anti-gay is, themselves, gay or that it is a great idea to point it out to them that they might be. In fact, an increased likelihood of something happening in a study that shows a correlation is not causation; it is not even close to meaning that everybody in a group of people will display a certain trait.

The point of activism is to show the other side your perspective in a manner that allows them to consider it rationally so that they can make better decisions based on the information. At least, that’s what the point of activism should be. Telling someone that they are the very thing they hate is unlikely to do this. In fact, if they are the thing they hate, you’re probably more likely to just piss them off than to get them to see a different perspective.

I am not going to claim that I’m totally innocent here, I’m not really sure if I am or not, to be honest. However, I have noticed that in all the debate going on right now, fighting for gay rights, holding religious organizations accountable for their actions and trying to get the needs met of millions of people, this argument keeps cropping up.

Not only is it irrelevant if a particular person is gay or not in the fight for gay rights, by using that argument, you’re reinforcing that being gay is a valuable insult because you’re using it as an ad hominem! Reinforcing the negative connotations behind something you’re already trying to defend is, just in case I need to point this out, counterproductive.